Doc just really loves diving and Coco View is his fave spot on this watery planet.
It is really one of five.
In the Caribben, I also like Tobago, Speyside (the North end)
- Philippines, Puerto Galera, Atlantis
- Sharm in the Red Sea, liveaboard
- Maldives via liveabaord
In the Caribbean, I have yet to find anything so easily accessible that offers the array of critters. The environs around CCV have everything I want. I've been dragged slowly behind a boat on a crude aquaplane and looked over the entire island for dive sites.
My love for the Bay Islands and the country go a lot deeper and longer than that. In the late 1970's, I met people who would go on to become those who ran the country. One of my dearest friends in life is a retired Congressman from Honduras.
Through the years, he introduced me to a lot of people who make day to day life a possibility in the country. I got to know Frederico Bloch, who owned TACA. Many of the people on the island who build, govern, and shape the island. Julio, Jerry, Vegas, Albert, Marcos, Bill, Doc, Stella, Evelyn, Patty, Tonio, Osman, Pelican, Billy, DV, Solomon and so many more... I've been to birthday parties, I've been to funerals.
In 1983, I took a different route and went off to Grenada. But after it all, I wanted to come to Roatan and find my place in the Sun. I've owned beautiful property there, but unfortunately never took up residence. Life got in the way.
In 1998, I showed-up following Hurricane Mitch and wound up being deputized by the government to do everything from writing news releases, unloading cargo planes, surveying damage to airports and piers, enforcing martial law, grabbing-up released prisoners, search for lost vessels, recover bodies, and hand out drinking water to mothers crouched in blown-apart houses. At the airport, uniformed guys, who look older now, often come to greet us when we return for diving. Friends for life.
I've cried, and laughed, been in awful situations, and more. Mostly I've seen the possibilities in these Bay Islands. I've also been stifled, as have the locals, by the meddlesome and ponderous government bureaucracy. I admire those I have met for their single minded devotion to their families.
I am amazed at their apparent total lack of desire to impose on the visitor to actively engage in entrepreneurial huckstering... The Gringos seem to have the market cornered on that one. There is a lot of "dog in a manger" mentality.
I have been taken aback at their citizen's institutionalized racism that is pervasive and invisible, I am amazed at their generosity and kindness to others. I snicker quietly when visitors come in search of "the island culture", wondering what it might be that they think they will find.
It is a British Island that is somehow governed by "Spaniards". The moneyed, land owning class in the Bay Islands are literal Cousins of Cayman Islanders. If you are lucky enough to have the rare encounter, listen to their voices, their speech inflections and accent. Cayman South.
This class of people have lately felt under assault as the "Spaniards" from the mainland have traveled there from the mainland, to make a living where the money is. The "Blacks", which are also largely the Garifuna, are also expanding from their original tiny settlements.
With the influx of home builders with North American money, followed by Italians and Spanish, the island has become a booming real estate market. This is where that huckstering I mentioned comes in.
The island is bursting at its seams, the infrastructure to support the workers and residents is maxed out. Drinking water and electrical supply is the most obvious. Medical services are dismal.
We created Honduras to serve the needs of the United Fruit Company, and the government was installed to service the whims of the management. I saw Banana Republic stores sprout in the 1970's and laughed- I had seen
the original Banana Republic... before they were making the clothes there!
Come and enjoy the place before it goes down the inevitable toilet that has claimed every other dive/cruise ship destination island in the Mar Caribe. If you want more out of it than that- if you want to own a house, live there, and take up residency, well... you better know what you're getting into. It is one damned strange place.
For right now, I see no reason not to go for your vacation. I don't expect that to change any time very soon.
